The GF gave me a twist & sparkle for my birthday. (Oh, I can’t believe I just typed that! Perverts!) Now I have an iSi sofa siphon that I use to make soda water and I really enjoy it. The T&S allows me to carbonate other delicious drinks. I think you know where I’m going with this.

Last weekend while hanging out at a friend’s house who has a T&S, we carbonated several batches of pisco punch. Other than the carbonation, the flavor of the punch was slightly altered. Basically, the flavor was a bit muted. We added a little extra lime juice to punch (get it?) up the tartness and the second batch came out great.

Another great benefit is making homemade sodas. And the first think I had to make was ginger beer! I used Morgenblogger’s recipe. It’s a very simple recipe and tasty to boot.

As I investigate more fun uses I’ll report back.

Cheers!

All of this got me to thinking – dangerous I know – about how tough it really is to still get a decent drink. Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of bartenders who aren’t into the booze-nerdyism. A shot and a beer and the occasional gin and tonic or something-and-soda is just fine thank you very much. And I have no problem with that whatsoever.

In my opinion, what it comes down to is this: as the drinker, what are you looking for and can you adapt? Bottom line is that you shouldn’t force the bar to conform to your expectations, especially if those expectations are contrary to the type of bar you’re currently sitting in.

For example, if I’m out at a speakeasy-style craft cocktail bar and order a Southside, I have a level of expectation on how that drink will be made and the quality of the final product. If I’m at Chili’s, I’m not going to expect the bartender to know what a Southside is, much less how to make it. And if they do make me something called a “Southside” that is not at all what I was expecting, then that is my fault.

Once I was sitting at a well known craft cocktail bar here in DC and listened to two baseball-cap wearing, fraternity row gadabouts bitch and complain about the menu being too wordy, the drinks taking too long to make, and the lack of drunk sorority chicks dancing on the tables. (And yes, this was the exact topics of their discussion.) They finished their first round of drinks, threw some wadded up bills on the bar and walked out. I don’t think they ever got their bill and I’m sure they left a paltry tip, if any at all.

Since their expectations were out of sync with the bar, they had a bad time and took it out on the establishment. The bar did nothing but operate along it’s normal course.

So, what to do at the airport or hotel bar? Adapt.

First, look at a menu. What is the most prominent spirit used? Do the cocktails look somewhat tasty on the menu? Second, look behind the bar? Are there 30 flavors of vodka, 1 bottle of Beefeater, a few random whiskeys, and a bottle of sweet vermouth with half an inch of dust on it’s shoulders? Or do they have bitters prominently displayed, multiple kinds of gin, whiskey, and liqueurs, and gleaming barware ready to be used? Finally, see what others are drinking and, just as important, how the bartender is interacting with the customers. This will tell you if he or she cares what the customers are drinking or whether he or she couldn’t care less.

What to drink? Depends on what you find. If it’s a vodka heavy hotel/airport bar and I’m going with hard alcohol, I’ll order a two ingredient drink: bourbon and ginger, gin and tonic, rum and coke, etc. Or I’ll stick with beer if they have something interesting. Since I’m not a big beer drinker, it would have to be something that catches my eye and outside the Sam Adams, Corona, Bud Light rubric.

If the bar looks like it could crank out a proper cocktail, talk to the bartender. Does he or she know how to make a negroni? Will they ask you if you want fruit salad in your Old Fashioned? Do they have bitter and if so, do they actually use them? You’ll learn a lot just by talking to the bartender and then you’ll be directed on which libation road to travel.

If you get really lucky and the bar has a bottle of Campari and a reasonably fresh bottle of sweet vermouth, you may be able to ask for a negroni.

Negroni
1 oz each Gin, Campari & Sweet Vermouth
-Stir over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
-Alternatively just build it an ice filled rocks glass and you’re set. None of that thar fancy stirrin’ stuff.

On our menus section, the PS7 menu has been updated!

In case you haven’t heard, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Brewer’s Ball is March 12th, 2011. I’ll be there, and if you buy tickets through the site – which I highly recommend you do because it’s an awesome event – use my name as your referral. Lots of great beer, food, auctions, and just fun.

Now it’s time for some infusions and drink experimenting. I’ve been sticking with beer or straight booze lately for the most part – I’ve just been so busy! But we’re going to see what we can do. And, hey, it’s a three day weekend. Might have to throw a cigar or two in there as well.

Happy President’s Day weekend, y’all!

Andrew Knowlton’s blurb on The Passenger is pretty much on point,

One could happily spend an evening ensconced in the up-front booths, sipping a Moscow Mule at brothers Derek and Tom Brown’s Chinatown-area bar. But in terms of speakeasy appeal, you can’t beat the reservation-only Columbia Room in the back.

Feel free to chuckle or what have you.

Obviously, I was posting pretty hardcore up until Tales last year.  Then we hit Tales, then soon after that I was sent to Korea for a month, and then…well, it’s been busy.  However, I’ve been redoing a few things the past few weeks, one of which means cleaning and redoing a lot of my apartment (thanks to mom and dad a lot for that) and it’s made it much easier for me to cook and make drinks in my place.

Thus, right now, I’m sipping a freshly made mai tai while smoking a Rocky Patel Edge Lite on my balcony.  Why a mai tai?

I’m using the Mr. Boston recipe for it, not the original Trader Vic recipe: 1 ounce each light and gold rum (I used El Dorado 3 year old and Scarlet Ibis), 1/2 ounce orange curacao (Creole Shrubb), 1/2 ounce lime juice (fresh squeezed mojito lime from Wegman’s), and 1/2 ounce orgeat, shaken, topped with one ounce of dark rum (Coruba) and garnished with a maraschino cherry (Luxardo – mine didn’t go bad like Marshall’s did).  But it’s the orgeat that made the drink for me.

For Christmas I bought myself (and Marshall) a selection of Trader Tiki‘s syrups.  He’s even having a TDN using the syrups February 11th – be there, or be square, or something like that.  Oh shoot – I’ll be in San Francisco that week!

Trader Tiki, of course, is a friend of the Den and a member of the CSOWG, and so when I saw he was making the syrups, I had to get some.  Also, the only orgeats I’ve had were from Fee’s, and I really wanted to try someone else’s.  I had bought some almonds to make my own but hadn’t gotten around to doing it yet.

Well, tonight I decided I wanted a drink with orgeat in it.  A mai tai came to mind, and a mai tai I did make it.  It wouldn’t fit in a lot of the smaller, vintage cocktail glasses Marshall got me for Christmas but that’s okay.

It’s still quite delicious.

Other than that I haven’t done much non-beer home drinking.  I’ve gone out to the Passenger a few times – and Eventide a few times, PS7 once or twice.

Repeal Day was at the beginning of December and if I thought last year’s was good, this year’s was even better!  Jeffrey Morgenthaler was the MC for the event, we had drinks from all over DC – and bartenders from all over the country – making fabulous drinks, great food from PS7, I wish I’d written this earlier so I could remember more of it.  One of my favorites was a thick, scotch-based drink with oats and I can’t remember what all else, made by the kilt-wearing Dan Searing (and which went great with my cigar from Curtis Draper in the heated cigar tent).  All in all, it’s a night that you shouldn’t miss.

I was also happy to introduce people to stuff that I can get readily in the DC area lately.  I gave my buddy Dan a bottle of Chairman’s Reserve rum, which is a great, well-priced rum that just hit the market (and for the next few months, a portion of its proceeds will go to help Haiti).  My granddad got a bottle of Highland Park 15 year old Scotch which it sounds like he’s enjoying a lot, and I gave my parents a couple of nifty bottles.  That’s my favorite thing about this whole hobby, to be honest – introducing new people to all the stuff that’s out there (like getting my brother hooked on Dark & Stormy-s) that they might not have known about.

I’ve also got a bunch of samples I really need to work up write-ups about, so hopefully you’ll see some of that coming up.  That being said, let me make sure I caveat something just in case you didn’t realize, and also to help cover our butts with the FTC.

From time to time, marketing folks like to send people free samples.  For the most part, we accept almost any samples, though Marshall is a bit pickier than I (and I still feel really guilty about drunkenly making fun of one offered sample back to the marketing person involved – I mean, I just feel bad about that, that’s unprofessional, though “unprofessional” is not an uncommonly used adjective around me).

HOWEVER, a sample does not mean we will necessarily cover it unless we specifically agree to ahead of time and NEVER means we agree to give it a good review.  We will review it as we find it.  We will review stuff we buy on our as we find it.  We will talk about drinks and products from bars, people, etc., that we get, no matter how it’s gotten, truthfully.  The advantage of us accepting samples from marketing folks is that it gives us more of a chance to tell you, our readers about it, and also to use our own money to “fill in the gaps” as it were.

And sometimes it’s also a second chance to try something we might not have wagered the money on again.  I’ll use Bulleit bourbon for an example.  I’d only tried it straight, from a mini bottle, and wasn’t impressed with it.  Mike Manning hooked me up with a sample of it, and I experimented a bit more and found it rather useful in a number of cocktails thanks to its flavor profile.  It’s not a straight-drinking bourbon, it’s a mixing one, but it works well as long as you keep in mind that it’s also not a SWEET bourbon.  The folks representing Bulleit have been very nice and generous, but if someone asks me for a bourbon to drink on the rocks, I’ll be suggesting something else.  If someone asks me for a bourbon to use in a Suffering Bastard, though, or a bourbon that likes to act like a rye, then I’ll say Bulleit.

Okay, enough of that.  It’s making me thirsty for whiskey.  What time do the Saints play?  That sounds like a good time for some Sazeracs…